In the bag

In the first segment of the “Green Police” Super Bowl ad from a few years ago, a “police” officer nabs a man who asks a store clerk to put his purchase into a plastic bag. “That’s the magic word. Green Police. You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, Plastic Boy.”

Turns out it’s a little more complicated than that.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania finds that reusable bags come with their own set of risks:

There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.